Chapter 10 #19
“Do you see?” Rose asks, tapping his finger, where he wears a swirled gold ring he acquired from goodness-knows-where, he would never tell or show her.
She leans in to see his face because she doesn’t know if he’s understood, because she wants him to be able to say goodbye, to know what’s before him, because why shouldn’t he have this right, like everyone else?
“This is our last sight of home, Euge. After this, it’s—”
He cuts her off by pressing his forehead into hers, with an intensity that startles her, and she winces because her temples are still bruised and aching but she doesn’t pull away: signs of affection from him are like butterflies—they flit by unexpectedly and you might not see another for months.
Then Eugene does a strange thing. He reaches into his jacket, lifts out the puppy, and places it in her arms, with deliberation and tenderness.
She takes it, of course she does, feeling the soft wisps of its pelt, its unquiet, restive warmth, drawn from her brother’s body.
For that moment, as they stand together at the rail, watching the coastline slide by, Rose believes Eugene has given her the puppy because he wants to wave at the land, their land, but almost in one movement, as she is settling the animal, tucking it under her arm, he turns and grips the rail of the ship—she hears the click as the back of his ring hits the wood—and, unbelievably, he vaults over it.
It takes a fraction of a heartbeat: he is there, beside her, and then he is gone, off the ship, beyond reach, arms outstretched, legs pedalling in vacant, salty air, a bird flinging itself from a rock.
Those present will later say that the girl—sister, cousin, whatever she was to him—screamed, that she howled his name, she put her boot on the side of the ship as if she, too, would throw herself over, that she had to be restrained, that it took four men to stop her following the boy into the sea, that the quartermaster had to come and tie her to the rail.
Some of the women sat down with her, wiped her face with their skirts, put their arms about her shoulders, rocked her to and fro, pulled out their beads to send up a prayer for the boy.
They brought water and hardtack, for her and for the puppy she had clutched to her bosom, and tried to console her, tried to say that he was in a better place now, he was with God, his earthly suffering was at an end, that the sailors had been heard to mutter afterwards that it took some like that, queerly, it had happened before, some simply cannot bear to leave, but the girl just wept, burying her face in the animal’s fur.
Others remarked, that evening, hadn’t he seemed a peculiar one, from the start?
Never gave anyone the time of day. It had happened so fast you didn’t see the poor lad hit the water—he’d just been snatched, behind the ship and away, by the wind.
As if he was a gull, or an angel. Those who had been by the stern at the time claim that they saw him fall into the waves, pulled into the road-like wake of the boat, the merciless green waters closing over his head as he was dragged down to the deep.
None of them said the truth: that in the moment they saw him jump the rail, they had all been feeling the same impulse, that their muscles were taut with the exact desire to leap from the ship, cold sea and certain death be damned, that they wanted only to get back, by hook or by crook, to their home, to undo what they had chosen, to die rather than to leave—anything but that.
As Rose’s ship sets a westward course, sails strained by a stiff wind—it’s a small but doughty vessel with many such crossings to its name, as well as a dark history in the capture and transportation of enslaved people in its rotting recesses—a clipper carrying a cargo of tea and spices is weighing anchor just outside Dublin.
Two seamen and the purser row in and report to the officials, who have come out to greet them, that there are no contagions onboard.
They wish, they shout across the choppy stretch of water that separates them, to put in here to offload a lone passenger and twenty chests of tea, to take on fresh water and whatever vegetables and live poultry can be had, and then be on their way—they come from the tropics and are bound for the frozen north.
Their papers and ledgers are taken into the customs office for examination. The seamen and the purser scull and bob in the choppy waters of the port; just within view, the passenger onboard waits under the slackened rigging, pack and bag at his feet. Then the signal comes that they may dock.
The clipper is seen to turn, three men working their strength at the wheelhouse, and half an hour later, she is alongside the wharf, the gangplank lowered.
First to disembark and set foot on soil (or, in this instance, a silty and malodorous puddle of rainwater collected in the dip between stones) is the passenger, a gaunt man, sickly of visage, with rain-sopped hair and a sunburned forehead.
He is dressed in an unusual and old-fashioned velveteen jacket, too large on the shoulders, with brocaded lapels; the waistcoat beneath is in a matching fabric.
His britches are worn but have gold buckles at the knees.
If the people on the docks knew the word “dandy,” they might have used it for him (it shall not be recorded here what word they did use for him).
Liam—for it is he, in an outfit obtained from a saffron merchant in Calcutta, traded for a signet ring, a leather-bound Bible and the Order’s robe, may God or whatever is the good in the world forgive him—leans to pick up his luggage.
Dusk is infiltrating the sky and streets before him, and he finds, after weeks of seasickness, that he is ravenously hungry.
All he can think about is securing a place to sleep and some dinner for his empty belly, and then, in the morning, he will decide what he’s about.
Several lodging houses turn him away—he cuts, he knows, a peculiar figure, dressed as he is—but he finds an inn on the south side of the river willing to take him.
He consumes a plate of tepid stew, then crawls into the lumpy bed and drops, as if from a tall tower, into a profound sleep, which seems to consist of narrow lanes and alleyways down which he must run, pursued by animals he believes are dogs until he turns to find, disturbingly, that they are malevolent-faced swine, with enormous tusks.
He is jolted awake, either by hearing a loud shout or making one—he does not know—and he lies there, heart hammering, unable to remember where he is.
Where is the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, where the nocturnal pulsing insects of the mission-house?
Can he be sure the ferocious pigs weren’t real, and what on earth is that unconscionable sound?
Liam lifts his head from the chilly mattress.
From the room below comes a hooting and a carousing, a drumming of feet, strains of music, a deafening roar and then the chime of laughter.
He sits up crossly, slides out a leg to drum his heel on the floor.
It is ineffectual: the noise intensifies, the music reaching a pitch.
There is the whoop and clatter of dancing, a shattering of glass.
He lies back, fuming, the insufficient blanket wrapped around him. Hours pass, or seem to, and the disorder below shows no sign of abating. Eventually, Liam stamps out of bed, pulls on his clothes and descends the stairs.
In the doorway of the bar, he comes to a stop.
Before him is a scene of inebriation, of wrongdoing, the like of which he has never seen in the course of his sequestered existence.
A man in the corner, who appears half asleep, his head resting on his chest, beats time on a bodhrán; next to him a piper plays a hectic, circling tune, and a woman stands with a hand on his shoulder, eyes closed, her dress hanging low on her bosom, singing.
Bottles and bottles of stout line the tables and the sawdust-covered floor.
Furniture has been pushed back to accommodate a wild and tumultuous jig, an arm-wrestling match by the door between two shirtless men, and Liam is certain gambling debts are being laid down.
Most shocking of all, there are—he flails for the correct term—clinches occurring.
He cannot think of another way to express it.
Clinches. Between men and women, in the shadowed recesses of the smoke-hazed room.
He puts a hand half over his eyes. Please, he says, ladies, gentlemen, please. There are people trying to sleep.
His voice is overridden by the din. Not a single face turns in his direction. A woman stumbles past him, laughing, shoving him aside, her face flushed, her skirts hitched up. Liam catches a flash of stocking-tops, white flesh spilling over, before he looks away.
I beg you to desist, he shouts. I for one have paid for a night’s rest.
Again, no one takes notice of him. Incensed, he seizes two bottles and chinks them together, and the music at last falters to a halt. Everyone turns.
This is no way to conduct yourselves, he thunders, as if standing at an altar with the heavenly host in his hands instead of two empty stout bottles.
You must reflect. On your souls. On the eternal reckoning they must one day face.
Drinking, he says, but at a slightly diminishing volume for he senses, strangely, that his command of the crowd is slipping away.
I said, drinking, he repeats, his voice wavering, disporting, keeping others from their rest. Need I remind you all, this very night—